Thanksgiving

To those of you who have seriously annoyed a turkey today, Happy Thanksgiving!

For me, dinner was cheesy pasta, aka mac 'n cheese. This is a big occasion for me, I kid you not, because I haven't had it in over two years. After years of avoiding the stuff having met my quota in early university, I returned to the dish with Alastair's help and a little bit of mustard powder or salsa, then it was off the menu as I await the day my system tolerates cow's milk again... still waiting.

Well, the mustard powder went a long way tonight, as I grated the precious ewe's milk Wensleydale eagerly sold to me by our local Waitrose cheesemonger and then melted it into my roux. It was so creamy and tangy, I could almost forget it wasn't cheddar. Far from the salty orangeness of the fast meals I relied on when I couldn't figure out how to adjust mom's recipes that fed 5+, and yet still the same sort of salvation.

Bless that cheesemonger!

Ely Cathedral

With the arrival of a houseguest, I always look forward to the new territory we'll explore together. Alastair and I don't often play tourist whilst living in Cambridge and are often grateful when we host houseguests for the opportunities they offer to do so. Most recently this meant a trip to Ely to visit the cathedral. I have to confess that the origins of the trip were to mostly take advantage of the lovely drive to Ely filled with fire-y autumnal leaves, and the big skies in contrast with the dark soils of the fens. It was just luck that we learned that cathedrals were a special interest to this particular houseguest.

Off we went, in pursuit of lunch and cathedral touring whilst the clock counted down to that evening's whisky tasting. The drive was beautiful, lunch quayside was an unexpected treat, and then the cathedral. Mind you, that cathedrals in the Britain don't have the reverent quality for me that others do. They can be awesome with architecture and displays but they don't have that ... something, which can leave me silent in grace, perhaps it's because of their size or perhaps their opulence or no, none of those rule out the others. Ely's cathedral was breathtaking and huge, especially when one considers the size of the town, and something I'll look forward to visiting again. Thank goodness for houseguests.

Something for everyone?

Post Office, St. John's Street, Cambridge

Happy Hallowe'en!

Death of a Drummer
about 1670-1680

Joachim Henne
North Germany
Elephant Ivory

Victoria & Albert Museum
London

Compost

I make compost all year round from kitchen waste, grass clippings and any other plants/cuttings that stand still long enough but there are two problems: some weed seeds manage to sneak into the pile; and adding a little every week means that the compost decomposes slowly. But, in the fall, you get large amounts of material at once as you harvest crops and plants start to die back and then you can make a big, hot compost pile which decomposes faster and cooks all those weed seeds so you don't spread weeds as you spread compost.

A couple of days ago, our neighbor Basil cut down his runner beans and dropped the remains over the fence for me. There must have been 10-15 cubic feet of stalks and leaves in the pile so I moved the existing compost pile aside and rebuilt the pile alternating layers of fresh material, cardboard and old compost and then watered the pile. The old compost is there to act as a starter but why the cardboard? It seems that decomposition needs a mix of nitrogen (fresh green stuff) and carbon (woody stalks, dead leaves and cardboard). Once it gets nice and wet, the cardboard also provides bedding material for worms and gives them somewhere to flee to if the compost gets too hot for comfort. The worms, of course, come from the old compost which was absolutely crawling with them (as well as beetles, bacteria and other soil-friendly organisms) and will do a great job of breaking down all the fresh material.

A few days later, I have added an insulating layer of fresh grass clippings (which worms don't really like - c'est la vie) and some more top layers of cardboard and the compost is getting quite warm to the touch. I'm hoping that it will get hot enough to cook any seeds that snuck into the compost. Those worms had better dive into the bedding layer in case they cook too!

We do have one wee problem with the compost though - it's been attracting fruit flies which have then flown into the house and are driving us nuts. I guess they must be attracted by the kitchen waste (did we suddenly start eating/tossing more fruit in the last month??) so I'm trying to find a way to keep the flies away from the compost in future. Top of the list is switching to vermicomposting (worm-powered composting) for kitchen waste. I already have lots of worms in the compost so what's different about vermicomposting? It turns out not much: I have to add a lot more bedding material and I need to bury fresh kitchen waste under bedding material (which I'm hoping will keep the fruit flies out). Most important though is I have to pay some attention to the worm's diet. It seems they like to be fed every day or two (so the food doesn't mould before they can eat it), they don't like acidic food, citrus peel, garlic or onions (which Edye doesn't eat either) and they don't like grass clippings (so I'll keep kitchen waste in a separate pile from garden waste). A bit more hassle than normal compost but all the reports I've read say they produce beautiful rich compost that improves soil structure, encourages earthworms to pull material down deep into the soil and fertilizes the plants.